Nobbut Laiking, by Ross Brewster
Religion. Ah, now there’s a thing. The school I attended provided subsidised boarding places for sons and daughters of people in the church. A rather quiet, studious boy in my year was excused from games and later became a bishop.
As a youngster I thought about religion. You could not avoid it with all those hymns and prayers at assembly and the special services once a month when parents of boarders came along. A clergyman’s parents once gave a sermon about sex and there was a definite hush in the close, broken only by the giggles of small boys.
I never really got religion. My principal worry as a confused 10-year-old was, when we die and go to heaven, do we have to take a change of underwear with us, or are all clothes provided?
Strange though, some of my most memorable Christmas thoughts are religion linked. The carol services at school where my children were pupils for instance. They were always great fun. You could guarantee something would go wrong. It was very Frank Spencer.
Perhaps the most memorable Christmas Eve was when I went to a midnight service at a little church set in the fells above St John’s-in-the-Vale. Most of the people there were from the farming community and a chap read a prayer in Cumbrian dialect which was atmospheric.
As memories of Christmases past come back it strikes me that we have lost our sense of community as we have lost our Christianity. But perhaps we don’t need to believe to maintain our religious identity. People trot off to the churches that do lunches once a week. It’s a godsend for elderly people on their own. No-one questions their beliefs.
As a young reporter I had to attend lots of church and chapel events in a largely rural area. They brought people together. Things like the rushbearing and the band of hope, I’m certain a lot of people having been to the latter to uphold abstinence were later to be found in the pub. Churches and pubs have gradually disappeared in recent times.
I don’t think people swallowed the whole religion thing, but mums liked to get together with other parents and the churches were the place where they met for events. For the elders of village society being on the bench and on the PCC was a badge of seniority.
But I do wonder in my philosophical moments, is the decline in our traditions and religion what lies behind our divided society. What is there to bind us together? Most folk would say we are a secular society and glad to be free of the ties of religion. And yet…
I don’t mind the WI singing Jerusalem or organisations having a quick pray as Father Ted might say. I am sorry that so many local events have gone by the wayside and we have lost our togetherness as a nation.
But can I have it both ways? A watered down version of religion that at least sustains our communities. I wonder what my grandfather Reverend William Brewster would have said. A speaker of such effect they named a whole housing estate after him. I don’t think, with his reputation as a hell-fire preacher, he would have brooked my wishy-washy concept of religion.
If, in the unlikely event I arrive in heaven one day, clean underwear or not, I have this dreadful fear that William will be up there waiting for me, his Bible open at various salient passages.
Could the Christmas TV adverts tone down the greed this year?
I hope you had a merry little Christmas, but not just like the song says.
Well actually it does say that, but it’s ironic. It’s not really about a merry Christmas at all, although when Ol’ Blue Eyes Frank Sinatra recorded it he demanded that the lyrics be rewritten and lightened up. It’s one of those songs that are played interminably in the weeks leading up to Christmas.
It was written by Hugh Martin for Judy Garland in the 1944 movie classic Meet Me In St Louis. Even Judy Garland found it depressing with passages like “have yourself a merry little Christmas, it may be your last.”
But it does make one think about a season that is not so festive for those who are lonely, can’t afford food and are separated from friends and family. In 2023 it’s criminal that we have people relying on food banks to feed their children and sleeping in the streets.
It also got me thinking about the television adverts this Christmas which seemed somewhat misplaced with their tables groaning with turkeys and ham and every conceivable trimming, especially when times are hard for a lot of folk. Apparently a “high end” lunch cost an average of £41.76 this year.
I don’t want to be an old grouch. I understand there’s competition among the big stores to have the most spectacular TV advert, but couldn’t they tone down the suggestion of greed?
Well that’s got my major moan out of the way. All that remains is to wish you a happy and peaceful new year.
